Free downloadable public domain paintings on Old Testament subjects.
A muscular young man with a strong profile, who looks fully destined to kill a giant and to reign as Israel's king, this David is no innocent boy with a slingshot. Carelessly cradling Goliath's huge, severed head with one arm and his oversize sword in the other, he gazes off into the future.
The Old Testament hero Samson rests his head on his hand in a pensive, even melancholic pose. Objects on the table recall two of his heroic deeds: he killed a lion with his bare hands, and liberated the Israelites by slaughtering a thousand Philistines with a donkey’s jawbone.
This initial B, introducing the first psalm, Beatus vir, represents King David who is shown here playing a psaltery, a stringed instrument consisting of a shallow box that is plucked, instead of his more traditional harp. The psaltery was widely popular in Europe during the 14th and 15th centuries.
The crestfallen Prophet Jeremiah rests his weary, old head on his hand. He laments Jerusalem going up in flames – in the background – whose destruction he had prophesied. Rembrandt heightened the sense of drama with powerful contrasts of light and dark.
Rubens painted this image of Judah Maccabee praying for the dead; the painting illustrates an episode from 2 Maccabees 12:39–48 in which Judah's troops find stolen idolatrous charms on the corpses of Jewish warriors slain on the battlefield.
The woman with seven sons was a Jewish martyr described in 2 Maccabees 7 and other sources, who had seven sons that were arrested (along with her) by Antiochus IV Epiphanes, who forced them to prove their respect to him by consuming pig meat. When they refused, he tortured and...
This is a painting from the Deuterocanonical book Maccabees. It shows the moment when Antiochus IV (the king of the Seleucid Empire) began to force Jews to worship Greek Gods by royal decree (1 Maccabees Verses 44–50). The Maccabees were a group of Jewish rebel warriors who took control...
King David exemplified mercy and self-restraint in preventing his companion Abishai from killing the sleeping King Saul (1 Samuel 26: 5-10). The simple, dramatic composition and statuesque main figures give this small, slightly eerie, moonlit scene a monumental quality. Yet the rhythm from the flowing movement and patterns...
Genesis (39:7–20) tells how Joseph, sold into slavery by his jealous brothers, was bought by Potiphar, captain of Pharaoh's guard. Potiphar's wife (who is not named in the Bible) took a liking to the young man and made several failed attempts to seduce him....
Bernardo Cavallino depicts an episode from the Bible in which King Saul, about to enter into battle with the Philistines, asked the Witch of Endor to summon the spirit of the recently deceased prophet Samuel, the last Judge of the Israelites. Silhouetted against a bright light emanating from a nearby...
Bartholomeus Breenbergh set the story of God's first plague against the Egyptians in a luminous, spacious Italian countryside, filled with romantic classical ruins inspired by examples he had studied in Rome. In a vast vista of space, the highlighted ruins stand starkly against the sky in the central...
Drawn from the Old Testament, a series of continuous narratives depicts episodes from the life of Joseph, the favorite son of the Hebrew patriarch Jacob. To make the story easier to follow, Biagio d'Antonio included inscriptions identifying the principal characters. In the left-hand loggia, Jacob, seated on...
With its horizontal format, this biblical scene of classically proportioned figures arranged in graceful poses resembles an ancient Roman frieze. Facial expressions and dramatic gestures serve a narrative purpose, revealing the story for the viewer. Rubens used vivid reds, blues, and yellows to describe shimmering silks and heavy cloaks. On...
When King Cyrus of Persia, seen at the center, asked his confidant Daniel why he does not worship the deity Bel, whose lower half can be seen in the shadows, Daniel replied that he worshipped a living god, not an idol. The king insisted that Bel was a living god...
In Giovanni Lanfranco's highly original design, a few large figures stand in a shallow foreground space. Using a low viewpoint and dramatic foreshortening, Lanfranco depicted the figures as if seen from below, imbuing them with monumentality. The powerful composition communicated both to spectators standing far away and to...
The Old Testament tells of the shepherd boy, David, who felled a seemingly invincible adversary, Goliath, by slinging a stone that struck the giant on the forehead. The Biblical hero then used Goliath's own sword to cut off his head. Here, Cagnacci depicts David after the victory, when...
The painting's subject comes from the Old Testament: the first book of Samuel, which describes the turning point in David's relationship with King Saul. The priest Ahimelech gives the sword of Goliath to the young David, who won it in battle. When King Saul learned that...
From the safety of the cave where they have taken refuge, Lot’s daughters appear absorbed by an event taking place beyond the painting’s borders—God’s annihilation of the city of Sodom, burning in the distance. Believing that they alone survive to perpetuate the human race, the daughters...
The story from the Book of Judith revolves around Judith, a daring and beautiful widow, who is upset with her Jewish countrymen for not trusting God to deliver them from their foreign conquerors. She goes with her loyal maid to the camp of the enemy general, Holofernes, with whom she...
This miniature, cut from a book of Old Testament prophets made in Sicily, presents the first of the prophet Zechariah's eight visions, a subject rarely depicted in art. Zechariah stands on the left, next to an angel who points to a man mounting a red horse. The angel...
Giovanni Lanfranco conceived this painting as part of a series executed for the Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament in the Basilica of San Paolo fuori le Mura (Saint Paul Outside the Walls) in Rome. Lanfranco depicts the imposing figures as if seen from below, imbuing them with a sense of...
The reverse side of the Morgan Picture Bible leaf continues the story of David and his rebellious son Absalom. On the upper left, the armies of David and Absalom meet in a fierce battle. Horses and knights overlap each other in the confusion of combat, with the knights raising their...
This folio tells part of the biblical story of David and his rebellious son Absalom. In the upper left, King David, crowned and enthroned, is dismayed to hear the news that Absalom has conspired against him and invaded his lands. Unwilling to fight, David withdraws from his palace but leaves...
Holding the jawbone as his attribute, Samson looks upward, perhaps to God. The great strongman slew a thousand Philistines with the jawbone of an ass (Judges 15:19). Overcome by thirst, he then drank from the rock at Lechi, a name that also means "jawbone" in Hebrew. Due...
